Project for the ideal city of Chaux: House of supervisors of the source of the Loue. Published in 1804.

Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (21 March 1736 – 18 November 1806) was one of the earliest exponents of French Neoclassical architecture. He used his knowledge of architectural theory to design not only domestic architecture but also town planning; as a consequence of his visionary plan for the Ideal City of Chaux, he became known as a utopian.[1] His greatest works were funded by the French monarchy and came to be perceived as symbols of the Ancien Régime rather than Utopia. The French Revolution hampered his career; much of his work was destroyed in the nineteenth century. In 1804, he published a collection of his designs under the title L'Architecture considérée sous le rapport de l'art, des mœurs et de la législation (Architecture considered in relation to art, morals, and legislation).[2] In this book he took the opportunity of revising his earlier designs, making them more rigorously neoclassical and up to date. This revision has distorted an accurate assessment of his role in the evolution of Neoclassical architecture.[3] His most ambitious work was the uncompleted Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans, an idealistic and visionary town showing many examples of architecture parlante.[4] Conversely his works and commissions also included the more mundane and everyday architecture such as approximately sixty elaborate tollgates around Paris in the Wall of the General Tax Farm.

Ledoux was born in 1736 in Dormans-sur-Marne, the son of a modest merchant from Champagne. At an early age his mother, Francoise Domino, and godmother, Francoise Piloy, encouraged him to develop his drawing skills. Later the Abbey of Sassenage funded his studies in Paris (1749–1753) at the Collège de Beauvais, where he followed a course in Classics. On leaving the Collège, age 17, he took employment as an engraver but four years later he began to study architecture under the tutelage of Jacques-François Blondel, for whom he maintained a lifelong respect.

The two master architects introduced Ledoux to their affluent clientele. One of Ledoux's first patrons was the Baron Crozat de Thiers, an immensely wealthy connoisseur who commissioned him to remodel part of his palatial town house in the Place Vendôme. Another client obtained through the auspices of his teachers was Président Hocquart de Montfermeil [5] and his sister, Mme de Montesquiou.

In 1762, the young Ledoux was commissioned to redecorate the Café Godeau, in the rue Saint-Honoré. The result was an interior of trompe l'oeil and mirrors. Pilasters painted on the walls were interspersed with alternating Pier glasses and panels painted with trophies of helmets and weaponry, all executed in bold detail. In 1969 this interior was moved to the Musée Carnavalet.

The following year the Marquis de Montesquiou-Fézensac commissioned Ledoux to redesign the old hilltop château on his estate at Mauperthuis. Ledoux rebuilt the château and created new gardens, replete with fountains supplied by an aqueduct. In addition in the gardens and park he built an orangery, a pheasantry and vast dépendances of which little remains today.

In 1764, he designed for Président Hocquart, a Palladian house on the Chaussée d'Antin using the colossal order. Ledoux would frequently employ this motif that was condemned by the strict French tradition, which embraced the principle of superimposing the classic column motifs on each floor, rising from simplest to the most complex: Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, etc.

Hôtel d'Hallwyll, Paris, 1766. Elevation of the facade on the rue Michel-le-Comte.

On 26 July 1764, in the Saint-Eustache Church, Paris, Ledoux married Marie Bureau, the daughter of a court musician. A friend from Champagne, Joseph Marin Masson de Courcelles, found him a position as the architect for the Water and Forestry Department. Here between 1764 and 1770 he worked on the renovation and designs of churches, bridges, wells, fountains and schools, in Tonnerrois, Sénonais and Bassigny.

In 1766 Ledoux began designing the Hôtel d'Hallwyll (Le Marais, Paris), a building that, according to the Dijon architect Jacques Cellerier, received widespread praise and attracted new patrons to the architect.[6] The owner Franz-Joseph d'Hallwyll (a Swiss colonel) and his wife, Marie-Thérèse Demidorge, were anxious to ensure work was executed economically. Therefore, Ledoux had to reuse portions of the existing buildings, the former Hôtel de Bouligneux. He had envisaged two colonnades in the Doric order leading to a nymphaeum decorated with urns at the foot of the garden. However, the limitations of the site made this impossible, so Ledoux resorted to trompe l'oeil painting a colonnade on the blind wall of the neighboring convent, thus extending the perspective.

The recognition given to the relatively modest Hôtel d'Hallwyll led in 1767 to a more prestigious commission, the Hôtel d'Uzès, for François Emmanuel de Crussol on the rue Montmartre. There too, Ledoux preserved the structure of an earlier building. Today the panelling from the salon, an early example of the neoclassical style, largely carved by Joseph Métivier and Jean-Baptist Boiston to the designs of Ledoux, is preserved in the Carnavalet Museum, Paris.[7]

Pavilion of Mme du Barry, Louveciennes, 1770-1771

Ledoux designed the Château de Bénouville in Calvados (1768–1769) for the Marquis de Livry. With its simple, almost severe, facade of four stories, broken by a prostyleportico, the Château de Bénouville, while not one of Ledoux's most inventive plans, is notable for the unusual placement of the main staircase at the center of the garden facade, a position normally taken by the main salon.[8]

His reputation established, Ledoux commenced a period of yet more ambitious designs. The Hôtel de Montmorency on the Chaussée d'Antin dates from this period. It has a principal façade in the Ionic order above a rustic ground floor. Statues of illustrious members of the Montmorency family decorate the roof. However, the depletion of the Montmorency fortune meant that Ledoux was required to execute the project with some parsimony.

Ledoux was interested in the work of the Royal Administrations Department and at times considered working for them, even though the positions they offered were often on the borderline between architect and engineer. Through this interest in civic and municipal architecture and due, in no small part, to the notorious influence of Madame du Barry, Ledoux was commissioned with the modernization of the Salines de l'Est (Eastern Saltworks). The modernization was initiated following the construction of the Burgundy Canal. In 1771 Ledoux was promoted to Inspector of the saltworks in Franche-Comté, a title he held until 1790, with the position yielding him an annual salary of 6000 livres.

In the 18th century salt was an essential and valuable commodity. The unpopular salt tax, known as the gabelle, was collected by the Ferme Générale. Salt served as a valuable source of income for the French king. In Franche-Comté, due to subterranean seams of halite, salt was extracted from saline wells by vaporizing in wood-fuelled furnaces.

In Salins-les-Bains or in Montmorot, the saltworks' boilers were built close to the wells, and the wood was brought from the adjacent forests. Contrary to what the French government wanted, Ledoux placed the saltworks near the woods as opposed to the source of the salt water. He logically reasoned that it would be easier to transport water than wood. Close to the first of these sites, the Fermiers Généraux decided to explore a more mechanized and efficient method of extraction, by constructing a purpose-built factory near the forest of Chaux, in the Val d'Amour. The saline water was to be brought to the factory by a newly constructed canal.

The design, which received royal approval, of the Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans, or Salines de Chaux, is considered Ledoux's masterpiece. The initial building work was conceived as the first phase of a large and grandiose scheme for a new ideal city. The first (and, as things were to turn out, only) stage of building was constructed between 1775 and 1778. Entrance is through a massive Doric portico, inspired by the temples at Paestum.[10] The alliance of the columns is an archetypal motif of neoclassicism. Inside, a cavernous hall gives the impression of entering an actual salt mine, decorated with concrete ornamentation representing the elementary forces of nature and the organizing genius of Man, a reflection of the views of the relationship between civilization and nature endorsed by such eighteenth-century philosophers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

The Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans: House of the director

The entrance building opens into a vast semicircular open air space that is surrounded by ten buildings, which are arranged on the arc of a semicircle. On the arc is the cooper's forge, the forging mill and two bothies for the workers. On the straight diameter are the workshops for the extraction of salt alternating with administrative buildings. At the centre is the house of the director (illustrated), which originally also contained a chapel.

The significance of this plan is twofold: the circle, a perfect figure, evokes the harmony of the ideal city and theoretically encloses a place of harmony for common work, but it recalls also contemporary theories of organization and of official surveillance, particularly the Panopticon of Jeremy Bentham.

The saltworks entered a painful phase of industrial production and marginal profit, because of competition with the salt-water marshes. After some not very profitable trials, it closed indefinitely in 1790 during the national instability caused by the French Revolution. Thus the dream of success for a factory, conceived at the same time as a royal residence and a new city, ended.

For a brief period in the 1920s the salt works were reused but eventually closed due to competition. For the following decades, the salt works lay in decay until they were named a UNESCO world heritage site and refurbished as a local cultural center.

In 1784 Ledoux was the architect selected to design a theatre at Besançon, Franche-Comté. The exterior of the building was designed as a severe Palladian cube, adorned only by an almost Grecian neoclassical portico of six Ionic columns. However, if the neoclassical hints to the exterior was regarded as modern then the interior was a revolution – venues for public entertainment were rare in the French provinces,[citation needed] and where they did exist it was traditional that only the nobles had seating, while those of less exulted rank had stood. Ledoux, realizing this was not only inconvenient but elitist planned the theatre at Besançon on more egalitarian lines with seating for all but in some quarters such a plan was seen as radical if not revolutionary, the aristocracy had no wish to be seated alongside commoners. However Ledoux found an ally in the Intendant of Franche-Comté, Charles André de la Coré, an enlightened man, he consented to follow this reforming plan. Even so, it was decided that the social classes would still be segregated thus while the theatre of was the first to have a ground floor amphitheatre furnished with seats for the ordinary paying public. Above them was a raised terrace or balcony for state employers. Directly above was the first tier of boxes reserved for the aristocracy, and above this a tier of smaller boxes occupied by the middle-class the second. Thus Ledoux achieved his ambition that the theatre could at the same time be a place of social communion and shared entertainment while still maintaining a strict hierarchy of the classes.

The seating was not the only innovation at the theatre. With the aid of the machinist Dart de Bosco [11] Ledoux expanded the wings and back stage scenery apparatus, giving it greater depth than was customary, and many other modern improvements. Besançon was the first theatre to screen the musicians in an orchestra pit.[citation needed] The building was widely acclaimed on its opening in 1784 but when Ledoux submitted plans for the proposed new theatre in Marseilles but they were not accepted.

In 1784, Ledoux was chosen over Pierre-Adrien Pâris for the construction of the new town hall in Neufchâtel. This was followed by the spectacular project that he conceived for the Palais de Justice and the prison of Aix-en-Provence. This project, however, was to be beset by many difficulties. Trouble began in 1789 when construction was interrupted by the French Revolution, when only the ground floor walls had been completed [12]

He was well acquitted with the world of finance and those who inhabited it. He designed a large house and park for Praudeau de Chemilly, the treasurer of the Maréchaussées, at Bourneville near Ferté-Milon. One of his more notable town houses was for the widow of the Genevan banker Thélusson.[14] This classical mansion, a venue for Parisian high society, was situated at the heart of a large landscaped garden accessed from the Rue de Provence. The house had an immense porte-cochere in the form of a pillared triumphal arch. The circular central salon, had at its centre a colonnade which supported the ceiling.

On the Rue Saint-Georges, for the creole Hosten, Ledoux designed an ensemble of tenements for rental, designed in such a way they could in future be extended ad infinitum. In the Rue Saint-Lazare, around a commercial warehouse, he designed the gardens of Zephyr and Flora, which were illustrated by Hubert Robert.

In the process of his work in Franche-Comté, Ledoux had become an architect for the ferme générale, for whom he built a salt storehouse in Compiègne and undertook to plan their vast headquarters on the rue du Bouloi in Paris.

To cut short the protests of the Parisian population, the operation was carried out rapidly: fifty barriers to access were built between 1785 and 1788. Most were destroyed in the nineteenth century and very few remain today,[16] of which those of La Villette and Place Denfert-Rochereau are the only ones that haven't been altered beyond recognition. In certain cases, the entry was framed with two identical buildings; in others, it consisted of a single building. The forms were archetypal: the rotunda (Heap, Reuilly); the rotunda surmounting a Greek cross (La Villette, Rapée); the cube with peristyle (Picpus); the Greek temple (Gentilly, Courcelles); the column (le Trône). At Place de l'Étoile, the buildings, flanked with columns alternating with cubic and cylindrical elements, evoked the House of the director at Arc-and-Senans; at the Bureau des Bonshommes, an apse opened by a peristyle recalled the pavilion of Madame du Barry and the Hôtel de la Guimard. The order employed was generally Doric Greek. Ledoux also used multiple rustic embossings.

This audacious construction met with political criticism,[17] as well as aesthetic criticism of the architect, accused by commentators such as Dulaure and Quatremère de Quincy of taking excessive freedoms with the ancient canons. Bachaumont denounced a "monument d'esclavage et de despotisme" (a "monument to enslavement and despotism").[18] In his Tableau de Paris (1783), Louis-Sébastien Mercier stigmatised "les antres du fisc métamorphosés en palais à colonnes" ("the bastions of taxation metamorphosed into columned palaces"), and exclamed, "Ah! Monsieur Ledoux, vous êtes un terrible architecte!"(Ah! Monsieur Ledoux, you are a terrible architect).[19] Ledoux, rendered the object of scandal by these opinions, was relieved of his official functions in 1787 while Jacques Necker, succeeding Calonne, disavowed the entire enterprise.

At the same time, work on the law courts of Aix-en-Provence was suspended, and Ledoux was accused of embroiling the Treasury in ill-considered expenditure. When the Revolution broke out, his rich clientele emigrated or perished under the guillotine. He saw his career and his projects stopped while at the same time the first blows of the pickaxe began to ring on the already obsolete wall of the fermiers généraux. As of June 1790, the Ferme générale had been able to install its employees in the buildings by Ledoux, but the octroi (granting) was abolished in May 1791, which rendered the facilities useless. A symbol of fiscal oppression, Ledoux, who had amassed a handsome fortune, was arrested and thrown in La Force Prison.

He still made a project for a school of agriculture for the duc de Duras, his companion in captivity. Perhaps the intervention of the painter Jacques-Louis David, son-in-law of the entrepreneur Pécoul, and considerably enriched in the collection of the octrois, helped him avoid the guillotine. But he lost his favourite daughter whilst the other brought a lawsuit against him.

Ledoux, who was eventually released, ceased building and attempted to prepare the publication of his complete œuvre. Since 1773, he had started to engrave his constructions and his projects but, because of the evolution of his style, he did not cease retouching his drawings, and the engravers constantly had to redo their boards. Ledoux evolved towards an architecture always more detailed and colossal, with vast walls that were increasingly smooth, and with increasingly rare openings. The differences between a drawing of the Pavillon de Louveciennes as it first was, made by the British architect Sir William Chambers and the engraving that was published in 1804 illustrate this process.

During his imprisonment, Ledoux had started to write a text to accompany the engravings. Only the first volume appeared during his lifetime, in 1804, under the title L'Architecture considérée sous le rapport de l'art, des mœurs et de la législation(Architecture considered under the relation of art and legislation). It presented the theatre of Besançon, the saltworks of Arc-and-Senans and the town of Chaux.

Around the time of the royal saltworks, Ledoux formalized his innovative design ideas for an urbanism and an architecture intended to improve society, of a Cité idéale charged with symbols and meanings. Along with Étienne-Louis Boullée and his project for the Cenotaph of Newton, he is considered a precursor to the utopians who would follow.[20] Boullée and Ledoux were a specific influence on subsequent Greek Revival architects and especially Benjamin Henry Latrobe who carried through the style in the United States for public architecture with the intention that the spirit of the ancient Athenian democracy would be echoed by buildings serving the new democracy of the United States of America.

After 1775 he presented Turgot with the first sketches of the town of Chaux, centered on the royal saltworks. The project, constantly perfected but never executed, was engraved beginning in 1780.[21] The engravings, announced in 1784 and probably all designed by 1799, were finally published in 1804, as part of the first edition of his L'Architecture considerée.[22]

As a radical utopian of architecture, teaching at the École des Beaux-Arts, he created a singular architectonic order, a new column formed of alternating cylindrical and cubic stones superimposed for their plastic effect. In this period, taste was returning to the antique, to the distinction and the examination, of the taste for the "rustic" style.

^Président Antoine-Louis Hyacinthe Hocquart de Montfermeil (1739-1794), president of the Court of Assistance of the Paris Parliament (1770), general prosecutor (1778), President and first president (1789); after he was executed during the Reign of Terror, his collection of paintings were declared nationals treasures and dispersed among provincial museums.

^Ledoux is not known to have travelled to Italy; Giambattista Piranesi had recently published engravings of the temples at Paestum, which effectively brought them into the European architectural repertory.

^Pierre Beaumarchais, who saw it as one of the causes of the Revolution, responded with his famous alexandrine "Le mur murant Paris, rend Paris murmurant" ("The wall walling Paris renders Paris grumbling.")

1.
Martin Drolling
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Martin Drolling was a French painter. He was father to Michel Martin Drolling, and to Louise-Adéone Drolling, also known as Madame Joubert, Martin Drolling, a native of Oberhergheim, near Colmar, was born in 1752. He received his first lessons in art from a painter of Schlestadt. He gained a celebrity by his Interior of a Kitchen, painted in 1815, exhibited at the Salon of 1817. He usually painted interiors and familiar subjects of general interest and his works were popular during his lifetime, and many of them were engraved and lithographed. He died in Paris in 1817, the Louvre has by him a Woman at a window and a Violin-Player

2.
Neoclassical architecture
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Neoclassical architecture is an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century. In its purest form, it is a style derived from the architecture of classical antiquity, the Vitruvian principles. In form, Neoclassical architecture emphasizes the wall rather than chiaroscuro, Neoclassical architecture is still designed today, but may be labelled New Classical Architecture for contemporary buildings. In Central and Eastern Europe, the style is referred to as Classicism. Many early 19th-century neoclassical architects were influenced by the drawings and projects of Étienne-Louis Boullée, the many graphite drawings of Boullée and his students depict spare geometrical architecture that emulates the eternality of the universe. There are links between Boullées ideas and Edmund Burkes conception of the sublime, the baroque style had never truly been to the English taste. The most popular was the four-volume Vitruvius Britannicus by Colen Campbell, the book contained architectural prints of famous British buildings that had been inspired by the great architects from Vitruvius to Palladio. At first the book featured the work of Inigo Jones. Palladian architecture became well established in 18th-century Britain, at the forefront of the new school of design was the aristocratic architect earl, Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, in 1729, he and William Kent, designed Chiswick House. This House was a reinterpretation of Palladios Villa Capra, but purified of 16th century elements and this severe lack of ornamentation was to be a feature of the Palladianism. In 1734 William Kent and Lord Burlington designed one of Englands finest examples of Palladian architecture with Holkham Hall in Norfolk, the main block of this house followed Palladios dictates quite closely, but Palladios low, often detached, wings of farm buildings were elevated in significance. This classicising vein was also detectable, to a degree, in the Late Baroque architecture in Paris. This shift was even visible in Rome at the redesigned façade for S, by the mid 18th century, the movement broadened to incorporate a greater range of Classical influences, including those from Ancient Greece. The shift to neoclassical architecture is conventionally dated to the 1750s, in France, the movement was propelled by a generation of French art students trained in Rome, and was influenced by the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann. The style was adopted by progressive circles in other countries such as Sweden. A second neoclassic wave, more severe, more studied and more consciously archaeological, is associated with the height of the Napoleonic Empire, in France, the first phase of neoclassicism was expressed in the Louis XVI style, and the second in the styles called Directoire or Empire. The Scottish architect Charles Cameron created palatial Italianate interiors for the German-born Catherine II the Great in St. Petersburg, indoors, neoclassicism made a discovery of the genuine classic interior, inspired by the rediscoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum. These had begun in the late 1740s, but only achieved an audience in the 1760s

3.
Utopia
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A utopia is an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens. The opposite of a utopia is a dystopia and you could also say that utopia is a perfect place that has been made so there are no problems. The term has been used to describe intentional communities, the term utopia was coined from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island society in the Atlantic Ocean. The word comes from Greek, οὐ and τόπος and means no-place, however, in standard usage, the words meaning has narrowed and now usually describes a non-existent society that is intended to be viewed as considerably better than contemporary society. Eutopia, derived from Greek εὖ and τόπος, means good place, in English, eutopia and utopia are homophonous, which may have given rise to the change in meaning. Chronologically, the first recorded utopian proposal is Platos Republic, part conversation, part fictional depiction, and part policy proposal, Republic would categorize citizens into a rigid class structure of golden, silver, bronze and iron socioeconomic classes. The golden citizens are trained in a rigorous 50-year-long educational program to be benign oligarchs, plato stressed this structure many times in both quotes by him and in his published works, such as the Republic. The wisdom of these rulers will supposedly eliminate poverty and deprivation through fairly distributed resources, the educational program for the rulers is the central notion of the proposal. It has few laws, no lawyers and rarely sends its citizens to war, during the 16th century, Thomas Mores book Utopia proposed an ideal society of the same name. Some maintain the position that Mores Utopia functions only on the level of a satire, but the homophonic prefix eu-, meaning good, also resonates in the word, with the implication that the perfectly good place is really no place. Ecological utopian society describes new ways in which society should relate to nature and these works perceive a widening gap between the modern Western way of living that destroys nature and a more traditional way of living before industrialization. Ecological utopias may advocate a society that is more sustainable, according to the Dutch philosopher Marius de Geus, ecological utopias could be inspirational sources for movements involving green politics. Particularly in the early 19th century, several ideas arose. These ideas are often grouped in a utopian socialist movement. A once common characteristic is a distribution of goods, frequently with the total abolition of money. Citizens only do work which they enjoy and which is for the good, leaving them with ample time for the cultivation of the arts. One classic example of such a utopia was Edward Bellamys Looking Backward, Another socialist utopia is William Morriss News from Nowhere, written partially in response to the top-down nature of Bellamys utopia, which Morris criticized. However, as the socialist movement developed, it moved away from utopianism, in a materialist utopian society, the economy is perfect, there is no inflation, and only perfect social and financial equality exists

4.
French Revolution
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Through the Revolutionary Wars, it unleashed a wave of global conflicts that extended from the Caribbean to the Middle East. Historians widely regard the Revolution as one of the most important events in human history, the causes of the French Revolution are complex and are still debated among historians. Following the Seven Years War and the American Revolutionary War, the French government was deeply in debt, Years of bad harvests leading up to the Revolution also inflamed popular resentment of the privileges enjoyed by the clergy and the aristocracy. Demands for change were formulated in terms of Enlightenment ideals and contributed to the convocation of the Estates-General in May 1789, a central event of the first stage, in August 1789, was the abolition of feudalism and the old rules and privileges left over from the Ancien Régime. The next few years featured political struggles between various liberal assemblies and right-wing supporters of the intent on thwarting major reforms. The Republic was proclaimed in September 1792 after the French victory at Valmy, in a momentous event that led to international condemnation, Louis XVI was executed in January 1793. External threats closely shaped the course of the Revolution, internally, popular agitation radicalised the Revolution significantly, culminating in the rise of Maximilien Robespierre and the Jacobins. Large numbers of civilians were executed by revolutionary tribunals during the Terror, after the Thermidorian Reaction, an executive council known as the Directory assumed control of the French state in 1795. The rule of the Directory was characterised by suspended elections, debt repudiations, financial instability, persecutions against the Catholic clergy, dogged by charges of corruption, the Directory collapsed in a coup led by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799. The modern era has unfolded in the shadow of the French Revolution, almost all future revolutionary movements looked back to the Revolution as their predecessor. The values and institutions of the Revolution dominate French politics to this day, the French Revolution differed from other revolutions in being not merely national, for it aimed at benefiting all humanity. Globally, the Revolution accelerated the rise of republics and democracies and it became the focal point for the development of all modern political ideologies, leading to the spread of liberalism, radicalism, nationalism, socialism, feminism, and secularism, among many others. The Revolution also witnessed the birth of total war by organising the resources of France, historians have pointed to many events and factors within the Ancien Régime that led to the Revolution. Over the course of the 18th century, there emerged what the philosopher Jürgen Habermas called the idea of the sphere in France. A perfect example would be the Palace of Versailles which was meant to overwhelm the senses of the visitor and convince one of the greatness of the French state and Louis XIV. Starting in the early 18th century saw the appearance of the sphere which was critical in that both sides were active. In France, the emergence of the public sphere outside of the control of the saw the shift from Versailles to Paris as the cultural capital of France. In the 1750s, during the querelle des bouffons over the question of the quality of Italian vs, in 1782, Louis-Sébastien Mercier wrote, The word court no longer inspires awe amongst us as in the time of Louis XIV

5.
Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans
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The Saline Royale is a historical building at Arc-et-Senans in the department of Doubs, eastern France. It is next to the Forest of Chaux and about 35 kilometers from Besançon, the architect was Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, a prominent Parisian architect of the time. The Institut Claude-Nicolas Ledoux has taken on the task of conservator and is managing the site as a monument, UNESCO added the Salines Royales to its List of World Heritage Sites in 1982. Today, the site is open to the public. It includes, in the building the coopers used, displays by the Ledoux Museum of other projects that were never built. Also, the production buildings house temporary exhibitions. The train line from Besançon to Bourg-en-Bresse passes just next to the salt works, the station for Arc-et-Senans is only a few dozen meters from the site. In the 18th century salt was an essential and valuable commodity, at the time, salt was widely used for the preservation of foods such as meat or fish. The ubiquity of salt use caused the French government to impose the gabelle, the government mandated that all people over the age of 8 years buy an amount of salt per year at a price that the government had set. The Ferme Générale was responsible for collecting the gabelle, as a region, Franche-Comté was relatively well-endowed with salt springs due to subterranean seams of halite. Consequently, there were a number of salt works, such as those at Salins-les-Bains and Montmorot. The salt works close to the springs and drew on wood brought from nearby forests. After many years of exploitation, the forests were becoming more and more rapidly denuded, with the result that wood had to be brought from farther and farther away, furthermore, over time the salt content of the brine was dropping. This led the experts of the Ferme Générale to consider exploiting even small springs, part of the problem was that it was impossible to build evaporation buildings because Salins-les-Bains sat in a small valley. The Fermiers Généraux decided to explore a more mechanised and efficient method of extraction. The concept was to construct a factory near the forest of Chaux in the Val dAmour. On September 20,1771, Louis XV appointed Ledoux Commissioner of the Salt Works of Lorraine, as Commissioner, Ledoux was responsible for inspecting the different saltworks in eastern France. This gave him an opportunity to see many different saltworks, including those at Salins-les-Bains and Lons-le-Saunier, two years later, Madame du Barry supported Ledouxs nomination to membership in the Royal Academie of Architecture

6.
Marne
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Marne is a department in north-eastern France named after the river Marne which flows through the department. The prefecture of Marne is Châlons-en-Champagne, the subprefectures are Épernay, Reims, Sainte-Menehould, and Vitry-le-François. The Champagne vineyards producing the world-famous sparkling wine are located within Marne, Marne is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4,1790. It was created from the province of Champagne, Marne has a long association with the French Army. The smaller Camp de Moronvilliers lies to the east of Reims and these are all on the chalk of the Champagne plateau, a feature comparable in geology but not size, with the British military training ground on Salisbury Plain. Marne is part of the region of Grand Est and is surrounded by the departments of Ardennes, Meuse, Haute-Marne, Aube, Seine-et-Marne, and Aisne. Geologically, it divides into two parts, the Upper Cretaceous chalk plain in the east and the more wooded. Rivers draining the department include the Marne, Vesle, Ardre, numerous other rivers, such as the Grande and the Petite Morin rise in the department but flow mainly in others. Conversely, the Aube joins the Seine in the department of Marne, the inhabitants of the department are called Marnais. Reims, with its famous cathedral in which the kings of France were traditionally crowned, is a major attraction, other branches of tourism are provided by the bird reserve on the Lake Der-Chantecoq and the fishing lakes nearby. The Parc Naturel Régional de la Montagne de Reims is an area of country recreation. In the west of the département there are scenic routes to be explored as also are the several wine cellars of Épernay

7.
Classics
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Classics or Classical Studies is the study of classical antiquity. It encompasses the study of the Graeco-Roman world, particularly of its languages, and literature but also it encompasses the study of Graeco-Roman philosophy, history, and archaeology. Traditionally in the West, the study of the Greek and Roman classics was considered one of the cornerstones of the humanities and it has been traditionally a cornerstone of a typical elite education. The word Classics is derived from the Latin adjective classicus, meaning belonging to the highest class of citizens, the word was originally used to describe the members of the highest class in ancient Rome. By the 2nd century AD the word was used in literary criticism to describe writers of the highest quality, for example, Aulus Gellius, in his Attic Nights, contrasts classicus and proletarius writers. By the 6th century AD, the word had acquired a meaning, referring to pupils at a school. Thus the two meanings of the word, referring both to literature considered to be of the highest quality, and to the standard texts used as part of a curriculum. In the Middle Ages, classics and education were tightly intertwined, according to Jan Ziolkowski, while Latin was hugely influential, however, Greek was barely studied, and Greek literature survived almost solely in Latin translation. The works of even major Greek authors such as Hesiod, whose names continued to be known by educated Europeans, were unavailable in the Middle Ages. Along with the unavailability of Greek authors, there were differences between the classical canon known today and the works valued in the Middle Ages. Catullus, for instance, was almost entirely unknown in the medieval period, the Renaissance led to the increasing study of both ancient literature and ancient history, as well as a revival of classical styles of Latin. From the 14th century, first in Italy and then increasingly across Europe, Renaissance Humanism, Humanism saw a reform in education in Europe, introducing a wider range of Latin authors as well as bringing back the study of Greek language and literature to Western Europe. This reintroduction was initiated by Petrarch and Boccaccio who commissioned a Calabrian scholar to translate the Homeric poems, the late 17th and 18th centuries are the period in Western European literary history which is most associated with the classical tradition, as writers consciously adapted classical models. Classical models were so prized that the plays of William Shakespeare were rewritten along neoclassical lines. From the beginning of the 18th century, the study of Greek became increasingly important relative to that of Latin, in this period Johann Winckelmanns claims for the superiority of the Greek visual arts influenced a shift in aesthetic judgements, while in the literary sphere, G. E. Lessing returned Homer to the centre of artistic achievement, in the United Kingdom, the study of Greek in schools began in the late 18th century. The poet Walter Savage Landor claimed to have one of the first English schoolboys to write in Greek during his time at Rugby School. The 19th century saw the influence of the world, and the value of a classical education, decline, especially in the US